J. Robert Lennon

Serialized by Harper’s magazine in 2006, J. Robert Lennon’s novel Happyland, about a doll tycoon’s overzealous attempts to make over a small town in upstate New York, was a delightful respite from the news of an Iraq War going from bad to worse. Now his latest novel, Castle, returns to that year to confront the mentality behind the worst mistakes of that conflict. The writer, professor, blogger and musician discusses his irritation with American notions of masculinity, the recent firing of Harper’s editor and the fact that he has never even Googled Pleasant Rowland, the doll tycoon whose potential litigiousness frightened away the novels’ original publisher.